I Want to Learn

Gavin sat on the beach, turning half a broken seashell between his fingers, unsure how to begin.

The sea breeze blew Cordelia's silver hair across half her face. She didn't brush it aside. She simply sat there, waiting for him to speak.

The girl who had awakened from her Consciousness Space with an easy smile had gone completely quiet. She wanted to know what had happened, and why Gavin had suddenly mentioned her mother.

"Back there," Gavin said, turning the shell fragment over and rubbing the sand from it with his thumb, "something happened."

"In fact, I almost failed."

In the distance, Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. He wasn't particularly surprised. When the Obscurus had nearly erupted, he had thought the same thing.

Cordelia said nothing. She just kept watching Gavin.

He told her what had happened.

He began with taking the hand of her conscious form, then the sudden eruption of the black whirlpool, and the feelings that had come rushing at him—

He kept that part brief, leaving out how close the black claw had come to crushing him. Then he told her about the white light.

"That light," Gavin said, "came out of the black whirlpool."

Cordelia's lashes fluttered. She sensed what was coming.

Gavin went on. He described how the white light had gathered into the shape of a woman, descended from above, and wrapped her arms around Cordelia's conscious form when the black Magic had already swallowed half of her. He described the woman's long silver-gold hair, almost the same color as Cordelia's, her face, her eyes, the curve of her mouth, and the way she tilted her head slightly when she spoke.

Cordelia gripped a corner of her robe where it lay across her knees.

Gavin told her what Elizabeth Rowle had explained.

Love Magic,